Episode at a glance: Kelly Cane, owner of Moxie Creative, and Taylor pull back the curtain on what’s next for the St. Cloud, Minnesota agency. They share why Moxie is focusing on food and beverage and tourism, what makes these experience-based industries different, and why Moxie is staying local while it grows. The big takeaway: when you sell an experience, you have to help people feel it before they ever get there.
Listen to Episode 087 of Behind the Brand
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Episode chapters
- 00:00 Pulling Back the Curtain
- 01:20 Meet Marcy, the Office Puppy
- 02:06 An Up-and-Down Year
- 03:03 The Messy Middle Brings Clarity
- 05:10 Staying Local, Built for More
- 05:54 How Advertising Has Changed
- 08:08 Why Pick a Few Focus Industries
- 10:05 Food and Beverage
- 11:21 The Lost Art of Print-Ready Files
- 12:28 Tourism and Experience-Based Marketing
- 13:46 Networking Beyond Your Backyard
- 15:55 Giving Tourism Brands Legs
- 18:23 Still Proudly St. Cloud
- 19:27 Thanks for Listening
There’s a tiny puppy named Marcy shaking in Kelly’s lap, and Taylor is trying to start the episode. (Marcy belongs to Tyler, our designer, and she’s too little to stay home alone.) It’s a fitting way to kick off this one, because this week the whole Moxie family is in the room.
On this episode of Behind the Brand, Taylor and Kelly Cane, owner of Moxie Creative, talk about the next chapter for our St. Cloud, Minnesota agency: where we’re headed, why we picked these industries, and what isn’t changing one bit.
Why is Moxie choosing a few industries to focus on?
Moxie is focusing on food and beverage and tourism because that’s where our team does its best work and has the most fun. After three and a half years of saying yes to almost everything, we wanted a clearer target.
This year helped. Some long-term clients retired, some industries shifted, and budgets got tighter. Our hosts call it the messy middle. “That’s where you can start gaining clarity and figuring out what you wanna do,” one of them said.
After almost six years of working together, our hosts agree this is the clearest they’ve been about where Moxie is going and the work they want the team doing.
Is Moxie still a local agency?
Yes. Moxie is first and foremost a local agency, and that stays true. We love our clients, our community, and the connections we’ve built in the greater St. Cloud area.
We’ll keep helping small and mid-sized businesses across Minnesota and the Midwest. Few things beat driving around town, seeing our work, and telling the kids, “Mommy worked on that.”
What changes is how far we reach. Our team is built for more, and there are opportunities beyond our home base we’re ready to sink our teeth into.
How has agency work changed over the years?
Agencies used to handle almost everything for a business, from design to media buying. Kelly started at Thielen Advertising, the first agency in St. Cloud, where much of the job was placing media. Back then, you usually went through an agency to get a billboard up.
After the Great Recession in 2008, vendors started selling direct and making their own artwork. Then social media and digital came along and changed the game again. Agencies became more creative and built brands, websites, and digital campaigns.
Through all of it, Kelly’s agencies stayed full service and proud of it. Lately, though, local businesses are comparing cost more than value, and there’s more competition from smaller players and freelancers. A consultant we’ve been working with told us this is the normal progression of an agency: you cut your teeth locally, then you pick a few verticals and go show what you can do.
Why food and beverage?
Food and beverage is a natural fit because Moxie has done it for years. We’ve branded almost every local brewery in town and handled plenty of packaging along the way.
The category keeps growing, too. New beverages launch all the time across the country, and they come in more flavors and formats than ever. There aren’t that many locally, so this is a great way to reach beyond our own network. We also want to grow our food work, which has been a fun part of the last couple of years.
And the projects are a blast. With a new beverage, we often get to create the brand from scratch. “We’re the architect of that brand,” as our hosts put it, and every brand wants its product to jump off the shelf.
Packaging Is a Lost Art (and Our Team Has It)
Packaging is a whole different animal from a website. There’s a ton of detail, and files have to be set up right for print.
Many of our designers have worked at printers, so they know how to set up files that print the way they should. It’s a bit of a lost art. Plenty of brands assume the printer will fix their files for them. Spoiler: they won’t.
Having that experience in-house is a big advantage, and we don’t talk about it nearly enough. Consider this our note to self.
What is experience-based marketing?
Experience-based marketing helps people feel a product or place before they’ve tried it. Our hosts see the same thread running through food, beverage, and tourism.
If you want someone to visit your destination, we have to help them experience it before they arrive. If you want someone to try your beverage, the label has to do that work on the shelf. A good label tells shoppers it’s a good product, whether they notice or not.
Tourism brings its own fun. We can tell a destination’s story through websites and social media and use more of the full-service work we love.
How do you refresh a brand you can't change?
You expand it. When a city or destination can’t change its logo (sometimes it’s painted on the water tower), we can still give the brand more life.
Tourism often comes with a board upon a board upon a board, so a brand-new identity is a tough sell. Building on the current one is a different story. We show what the brand looks like on social, on the website, on a business card, and on everything in between.
Look at The Barrel Mill, where a library of work grew out of one logo. Adding to a brand without starting over is some of our favorite work.
Tune In and Get Inspired
Moxie’s next chapter comes down to doing more of the work that lights us up, for brands that sell experiences, without leaving the hometown that got us here. If you’re in food and beverage or tourism anywhere in Minnesota or the Midwest, we’d love to meet you.
Grab a coffee (Marcy’s optional) and listen to the full conversation. You’ll hear more about the year that shaped this decision and why packaging still makes our designers’ hearts sing. Rethinking where your own business is headed? Give it a listen.
Frequently Asked Questions
What industries is Moxie Creative focusing on?
Moxie Creative is focusing on food and beverage and tourism, which it calls experience-based industries. Moxie Creative will keep serving small and mid-sized businesses in St. Cloud and across Minnesota and the Midwest.
Is Moxie Creative still a local agency?
Yes. Kelly Cane and Taylor say Moxie Creative is first and foremost a local agency and will keep supporting businesses in the greater St. Cloud area while it grows statewide.
What is experience-based marketing?
Experience-based marketing helps people feel a product or destination before they ever try it, through things like packaging, websites, and social media. Moxie Creative uses it for food, beverage, and tourism brands.
Can Moxie Creative refresh a brand without changing the logo?
Yes. Moxie Creative specializes in brand expansion, building on an existing logo and identity across social media, websites, business cards, and other materials when a full rebrand isn’t possible.
